The Bards of Bone Plain

Chapter Eleven

Zoe sat with the old bard as he lay in his chambers. She watched him silently. His eyes were closed, but he was awake, she guessed from the hard lines converging just above the bridge of his nose. He was silent as well. The king’s physician had examined him; he had let fall a miserly word or two then, grudging even those. He had choked on an errant salmon bone, he was told. Master Cle’s flailing arm had accidentally caught him where it did the most good; he had some bruises from his fall, but nothing sprained or broken. He would be fit as the proverbial fiddle tomorrow, the physician promised, and left him something that would put him to sleep when he drank it.

He did not drink it.

His servants had undressed him and put him to bed, while Zoe returned to the hall to ask Phelan to sing in her place. He was surprised, but he didn’t care. He had a fine, sinewy voice; he could perform the ancient Grishold love ballad as easily as pull on a boot. She went to give her excuses to the musicians in the gallery and to ask them to do what they could to replace Quennel, so that Lord Grishold’s bard would not be pressed to entertain the entire long evening. Lord Grishold’s bard was already there, tuning his harp and watching the guests below take their places for supper in the great hall.

She studied his absorbed face a moment and realized she would not want him to examine too closely the expression on hers. She turned away quickly without speaking and went back to Quennel’s chambers. He didn’t look at her or speak, even after she sent his servants away. She waited. He drifted a little at first, she thought, until she felt the deep focus of his thoughts, worrying at some kernel of truth within a husk held in the beak of some dark bird that held him fixed in the reflection of its black, black eye.

“Zoe.”

She opened her own eyes, blinked the sumptuous room around her, the bright tapestries and carpets, the ancient, legendary instruments that Quennel had collected through the decades, each in its special place. She struggled between dreams and memory, straightening in the armchair, and remembered the bard tucked into silk and fur and glowing damask, safe in his bed beside her. She turned to him, smiling; the smile smacked like a fledgling against hard glass, dropped.

He had finally opened his own eyes, but the grooves of the frown between them had only dug deeper.

“Master Quennel. Are you in pain?”

“Did you sing?”

“Without you? Of course not.”

“Then that bard from Grishold who wants my life is in the great hall playing for the king.”

She felt her own brows draw together, but answered gently, “Many bards in this kingdom want your position. This bard will be gone like a spell of nasty weather in a few days, and you will be playing for the king again tomorrow.”

He sought her eyes finally. “You don’t like him, either.”

“Not for a moment.” She hesitated, feeling him want more, his weary gaze drawing at her. “I’m not sure why,” she added finally. “Except that what we see—what he tells us to see—seems false. He is simply not convincing as a country innocent from the lonely tors of Grishold.”

“Have you heard him play tonight?”

“No. I’ve been mostly here with you.”

“Go and listen to him.”

She hesitated, reluctant to leave him. “He must have stopped by now.”

“No. I can hear him.” How, in that ancient wing of the castle, through walls thick with history, Zoe could not imagine. She listened, heard only the endless silence of stone. “Go and come back and tell me if he’s any good.”

Quennel must have been playing the bard’s music in his own head, Zoe guessed as she hurried down the stairways and quiet corridors, passing from rough-hewn walls and flagstones to marble floors and oak wainscoting before she heard the distant, muted din from the hall. As she drew closer, the noise ebbed oddly, like a tide withdrawing, into absolute, astonishing silence.

A harp note broke the silence.

She entered the great hall from the back and found the guests motionless in their chairs, as though some enchantment had been flung over them. The enchanter loosed a mournful cascade of notes, and she stopped, stood unobtrusively in the shadows between the wall sconces. Kelda sat at the Royal Bard’s customary place, on a gilded stool in the center of the broad square formed by the tables. He faced the dais table, where the royal family and the visitors from Grishold seemed to have forgotten the food on their plates. A single wine cup flashed among the statues; as it fell again, clinking against cutlery, Zoe saw Jonah Cle behind it. Nobody else moved.

The bard struck a chord, and she recognized the ancient Grishold ballad he began.

It was a simple, powerful tale of a knight returning to his home in the western mountains after battle and imprisonment to find that all he remembered and loved had vanished. Only the birds in the rafters of his ruined hall were left to give him a message from his wife, to tell him what had happened in a language, like the harping, best understood by the heart.

Zoe felt her eyes burn at the sinuous, melting voice. She blinked away the tears, astonished at herself. On the dais, a couple of the young women were weeping openly, smiling through their tears at the bard. One of the household guards standing behind the king raised a hand to flick away something at the corner of his eye. The knight wandered away finally, exiled to his memories, riding forever into his past.

There was dead silence while the last chord flared like an ember and slowly died.

Then a sloppy, unwieldy wave of noise flooded the hall. Cups flashed, thumped; porcelain and cutlery collided; servants moved again, proffering dishes that had, for a time, been forgotten. It was as though the entire court had been spellbound, Zoe thought. Kelda put down his harp, then everyone could speak again. He accepted their accolades with a smile, enjoying the warmth flowing to him from all over the hall. Finally, he picked up his harp again, began a light, familiar dance that the musicians in the gallery above him knew, and one by one they leaped in after him.

Someone came down from the gallery stairs near Zoe and saw her. She recognized Phelan’s pale head under the lamplight and realized then how tensely she stood, hands gripping her elbows, her whole body harp-string taut, waiting, it seemed, for the descent of the harper’s hand. Phelan came over, leaned against the wall beside her.

“How is Master Quennel?”

“Physically fine, the physician said. Mentally—” She hesitated. “He’s in a powerful stew. About what, I’m not sure. Death, maybe.” She searched Phelan’s eyes, found him unsurprised. “I’ve never seen him so dark. He sent me down here to listen to Kelda. I think—though it makes no sense—that Quennel blames him for the accident.”

Phelan loosed the ghost of a laugh. “So does my father. I have no idea why, either. Have you eaten? There’s a supper laid out in the gallery for the musicians.”

She nodded, her eyes moving again to Kelda. “Maybe I’ll go up there, while he’s down here.”

Phelan regarded her curiously. “You’re avoiding him? He seems harmless enough. Very gifted, as well as very ambitious. A bit crude, suggesting that Quennel might like to retire.”

“I suspect that Quennel thought Kelda was trying to help him retire.”

“Forcing him to choke on a swallow of salmon mousse?”

“A salmon bone.”

“Well.” His mouth crooked. “There is poetic precedence in that. Taste the salmon and understand all things.”

“Including your own death,” she said somberly. “No wonder Quennel is frothing.”

She went up to the gallery, where the musicians were rollicking happily along with whatever Kelda tossed to them. She made a hasty meal of roast beef studded with garlic, leeks braised in cream, strawberry tart. Then she hurried back through the castle, the noisy party receding again behind her, to the bard’s chamber.

He was still awake, still brooding, still not inclined to share his thoughts. He watched as she came to settle in the chair beside him.

“Do you want me to send for some supper?” she asked. “Are you hungry?”

“I’ve swallowed enough for one night,” he said grimly. “Is he good?”

“Yes. He’s beyond good. Some of the things he’s playing are more suitable to a country court than for a formal supper given by the king. But he brought the entire hall to silence—and much of it to tears—with his playing of ‘The Knight Returned to Grenewell Hall.’ His voice could charm a fish into a frying pan.”

He stirred peevishly. “Don’t talk about fish.” Then he was silent for so long that Zoe thought he had fallen asleep. He sighed finally, and spoke, his voice hoarse; she could hear the weariness in it. “I’ll take that sleeping draught now. I’m finished.”

She poured it quickly into his cup, added water and a little wine as the physician had instructed, and watched him drink.

“Shall I stay with you until you fall asleep?”

“No.” He put the cup down and reached for her hand, smiling finally. “Thank you, my dear, for staying with me. Come and see me tomorrow. I want to talk to you then.”

“I will,” she promised, mystified, and sent his servant in to turn down the lamps.

She sensed Kelda at the school before she saw him the next day. Rumors of his playing had wasted no time getting up the hill. The masters’ refectory was full of the invisible bard when Zoe came up for breakfast. His name had somehow melted into the butter for the breakfast toast, insinuated itself under the shells and into the yolks of coddled eggs, so that a single bite transformed itself and fell as “Kelda” from everyone’s lips. The masters were preoccupied with him, their expressions complex as they spoke softly together; wonder vied with envy, even a touch of wariness, in their faces. Small knots of students chirped and twittered together in hallways, and under the oak trees when Zoe passed to teach her singing class. Exclamations, moans, and fervid sighs escaped them with all the mindless, irresistible force of steam spewing out of a kettle spout. He was to visit this class, she heard, and then that, and then at noon, he would play for everyone.

She was pacing around her very young students, enjoying their high sweet voices and adding her own to keep them in time, when she came face-to-face with the bard in her doorway.

He nearly dislodged the note in her throat. Years of discipline kept it tuned, though it came out with more emphasis than she intended. His impeccable ear picked out what, from anyone else, would have been a startled squeak. The glint of a smile in his eye teased her. He waited, his face impassive, until the children finished their song; and then he came into the room, clapping for them.

Some of the masters followed in his wake, and a dozen students, Frazer among them, looking dazed.

“How wonderful all of this is,” the bard marveled. “Declan’s school, the standing stones, the oak—the perfect background for passing on the ancient bardic heritage. I envy you.” He spoke so simply that for the moment she believed him. “I plucked my own skills from bush and bramble, from rutted back roads and the echoes within the empty ruins. I tuned my harp to the icy whine out of the back teeth of the wind, and to the oldest voices—”

“Of the standing stones plucked by the fingers of the moon,” Frazer finished breathlessly, and was rewarded by Kelda’s sudden, flashing smile.

“Yes! You astonish me. You know those hoary lines?”

“They teach us everything here,” the boy said diffidently, deeply flushed.

“How wonderful,” the bard breathed again, and turned his warmth upon Zoe. “I didn’t see you in the hall last night. I was sorry you didn’t sing.”

“I was sitting at Master Quennel’s bedside.”

“Yes. I’m in awe of the little I heard from you just now. Will you come and listen to me play later?”

“I heard you play last night. ‘Grenewell Hall.’ You nearly brought me to tears.”

“Nearly?”

“It seemed magical,” she answered slowly. “For a moment. Whatever brambles and hedgerows taught you to play like that must have been enchanted themselves. Master Quennel, since you didn’t ask, was resting quietly when I left him.”

“I didn’t need to ask since I was told this morning.” Again his faint smile teased, mocked, challenged. “Will you come and listen anyway? It’s an easy matter to raise a tear when emotions are already raw with the sudden illness of a friend. Not so easy in the clear and genial light of day.”

That made her smile, which annoyed her almost as much as her tears had. He saw that, too. There was no hiding from him, she realized, when he held her fixed within his sights.

“I’ll come,” she said abruptly, both her curiosity and her hackles raised, but by what exactly she had no clue. He nodded and left her to her transfixed students; she watched Frazer turn into his wake, drift after him as helplessly as a feather on the flood.

At noon, students and masters, their paths braiding along the garden paths as they sought their classes or the libraries or refectories, stopped midpace when harping, strong and mysterious, rippled out of the still, shadowy trees. Zoe, walking out of the tower door, watched absorbed and purposeful moving bodies suddenly forget where they were headed and why. Their heads turned toward the trees. They veered from their chosen paths, seemed to float along the grass as though the music they heard had pulled them beyond time and gravity as well as memory. It seemed to come from the memory of trees, the singing voices of the ghosts of the first oak as they taught the first bard to play.

Zoe followed as mindlessly and as single-mindedly as any around her. They knew secrets, she realized for the first time. Those old oaks sang mysteries. If only she could get close enough, begin to understand their language of sun, rain, wind, night. They knew something she wanted. They knew the first songs of the world, the first word forged out of the lightning trapped in their boughs, shirred free of the fire and glowing among their roots like a fallen star. If she could get close enough to see ... She was scarcely aware of the crowd around her, students and masters emptying the buildings to gather in the grove, all mute, as though they had not yet begun to learn this new language.

She stopped at the edge of the great circle around the singing tree and saw the face of the music.

She blinked, shaken out of a dream, she felt, and waking to a conundrum.

The bard was singing, not the trees. The bard was Kelda, who had watched an old man choke on a bite of salmon. All around her, entranced faces still seemed caught in the dream; transfixed bodies scarcely breathed. The bard, engrossed in his expert playing, dreamed as well, drawing his listeners ever more deeply into his wonderful vision.

“He’s good,” someone murmured beside her. “I’ll give him that. Zoe, do you know where I can find your father?”

She closed her eyes, opened them again, finally shaken fully awake and astonished at herself. She turned her head, met Phelan’s preoccupied eyes.

“Didn’t you hear that?” she whispered.

“Of course I did. I followed you out here.”

“I mean—the trees singing. Didn’t you hear the oak sing?”

He shook his head. “I must have missed that part.” He was silent a moment, peering at her; then he smiled. “You look bewitched. Even your hair seems full of elflocks. He’s been having that effect. Frazer looks even more spell-raddled than you. Do you know where—”

“No.” Then she pulled her thoughts together. “My father’s not in the tower? He’s usually still there at noon.” Phelan shook his head. “Then I don’t know where—Why? Is it important?”

“Yes, but only to me. He suggested I search some of the old stewards’ records for my paper.”

She shrugged, her mind straying again to the peculiarity in the oak grove. “Just take them,” she suggested. “He wouldn’t care. Most of them are covered with cobwebs and dust.”

“Are you sure?”

The bard, she saw suddenly, was looking at them across the crowd spilling out from under the grove. She couldn’t read his expression, but she could guess at it. He had unraveled his heart for them, spun it into gold and woven gold into a web. The two flies buzzing obliviously on the outermost strand of it would cause the bard dissatisfaction greater than his pleasure in all the trapped and motionless morsels within the shining threads.

“Yes,” she whispered quickly, and turned her back on the bard, followed Phelan into the clear and genial light of day. “I’m going to see Quennel,” she told him when they were out of earshot. “He asked me to visit him today. I’ll let my father know you’ve borrowed his books. If he even notices.”

“Thank you.”

She mused equally over Kelda and Phelan on her way to the castle. About what she had heard, and what Phelan had not. She had been as transfixed, as spellbound as anyone, she admitted. Anyone except Phelan, who had blundered through such beauty as though his ears were corked like kegs. He had heard the notes, but he had missed the music. Why?

She had neglected to change her clothes, so determined she had been to get out of the broad range of Kelda’s attention. Something was askew with him, brilliant as he was, something amiss. Her student’s robe and her familiar face eased her way into the castle; she was escorted to Quennel’s chambers and promptly admitted.

His color was better, she saw immediately. Not so his mood. He smiled when he saw her; his pleasure was genuine but brief, before the frown turned the smile upside down. He was still in bed, she saw with surprise, covered with silk and eyelet lace, with a cap on his willful hair.

“My throat is raw,” he said disgruntledly. “I can’t sing tonight.”

“You could play,” she urged him, inspired. “I’ll sing for you.”

The thought brought out his smile again. It faded more slowly as he looked at her silently, his reddened eyes unblinking, an expression in them she couldn’t fathom.

“I need you to do something for me,” he said finally, when she thought he might be drifting off to sleep again.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Anything.”

“I have been thinking about this yesterday evening, and most of the night, and this morning. You understand that I’ve given it my most careful attention.”

“Yes.”

“So don’t argue with me. I am going to relinquish my position as Royal Bard of King Lucien’s court.” She opened her mouth; nothing came out but a rush of air. “I would wait until Lord Grishold leaves,” he added distastefully, “if I had any hope that his bard would actually leave with him.”

“You’re going to retire? Because of a mouthful of salmon?”

“So why wait?”

“But—” She started to sit on air, looked around hastily to pull a chair into place. She sat, leaned forward, her hands folded tightly among the bed linens, her eyes wide, studying his face as though the answer lurked within his bones. “But why? There’s no need. You are still vigorous, your voice as tuned and resonant as ever, your ear as fine, your fingers—”

“My ear, my voice, my fingers are all telling me that as well,” he said so dryly his voice rasped. “But I saw my fate in that mouthful of fish. This is what I must do. I will announce my impending retirement but continue to play as Royal Bard until the moment a new bard is chosen.”

“There will be a competition,” she whispered, feeling even her lips go cold. “Between bards from all over the realm for the highest position. They will come to Caerau to compete, and I will be here to see it.”

“You will compete in it,” he told her grimly, and she felt the full weight of his determination, anger, and despair. “And you will win.” She stared at him, breathless, mute. “You will win,” he said again, harshly. “You will find the roots and wellsprings of this land within you, and sing them until the moon herself weeps. Because if you don’t, that bard from Grishold, who is no bard but something ancient, dark, and dangerous, will sing in my place to the king, and I don’t know what will befall this land when he has finished his song.”